A Friend's Pain
by TsumeAri
Summary: A fledgling fic, but it's complete. 2+1 implied


Disclaimer: I don't own gundam. Even though I wish I did.  
  
"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."  
  
Damn, how I hated that quote.  
  
I closed my eyes and sank into my chair. Think aloud Duo? You were his "best friend" and he didn't even confide in YOU.!  
  
I wanted to cry. Only today had I found out that Heero had died. His broken, shattered, body; had been found by Relena outside her kingdom.  
  
I had been told by Trowa, that He had killed himself (made obvious by the gun, clutched tightly in his dead fingers) and that he had left no note to explain his actions; but he didn't have to. Deep in my heart however hard it was to acknowledge. he had nothing to live for. The war had ended, the Gundams had been destroyed, and all that was left for him to do was remove the last deadly thing.  
  
I slammed my fist against the arm of my chair. Damnit Duo!. Why couldn't you have helped him? He wouldn't have done it if you had been where you were supposed to be. with him.with.him.  
  
My brain screamed these words like a broken record in my mind, trapping me in my own mental hell.  
  
I had called myself his friend. a real friend wouldn't have left him alone, not when he didn't know what to do. Not when he was so vulnerable.  
  
I had told him everything. My every thought was. had been spoken aloud to him. I never could tell if he had been listening or not, his eyes being glued to his laptop, but it still had felt good to have somebody to talk to.or in my case talk at.  
  
Heero never said much. When I first met him, I was lucky if he said a word at all. Trust is something that is not programmed into the "perfect soldier."  
  
In fact, emotion hadn't been programmed into the Perfect Soldier, and he had only spoken when he had to.  
  
Soooo. being the braided son of a bitch that I am, I made one of my soul purposes in life, to make him just be human. I joked, raved, and pestered; getting ignored at first; and in retaliation I just made myself ten times more annoying than I usually am. Finally getting little bursts of anger, or small grunts of "Hn" out of him.  
  
I found that even though he didn't show facial expressions, his eyes held all the reaction I needed. He gave me death stares, glaring out from beneath the cover of dark bangs. but even as his eyes flashed with anger, deep in their crystalline, cobalt depths, I saw a world of emotion belonging to the boy who wasn't the Perfect Soldier. The eyes belonged to a boy, a beautiful, lonely, sad boy named Heero Yuy.  
  
Heero.the name of the boy who took my breath away.  
  
My discovery of hidden emotion led me to even greater feats of insanity, and torment for the Japanese boy. He called me baka, or used the phrase that I had heard more times than I can count "omae o korosu" during which, he usually had a gun pointed at my head, but a reaction is a reaction, ne?  
  
I sometimes think it had been a game between us, because when he turned back to his laptop, I sometimes thought I saw the faint flicker of a smile on his lips.  
  
Heero had been our leader. In battle he was as dependable as the stars. He had been a fast, deadly pilot; out flying all the rest of us, and he was the only one who could keep the hot headed Wufei Chang under control. Heero, and the Wing Zero Gundam, had brought peace to the colonies and Earth.  
  
I sighed; shaken out of my reverie. The war was over. The other pilots were creating new lives for themselves. Quatre, was in what had once been Israel, and was starting a refugee program, Trowa, was where any good lover should be, with his chosen, and Wufei, he was somewhere in space upholding the peace.  
  
I smiled to myself and looked around. Grey light from outside was streaming through the windows of the old safe-house.  
  
Me? Where do I begin to start over?  
  
I had called myself Shinigami during the war. Wherever my Gundam and I passed over, we left the broken remains of bodies and mobile suits strewn about. My "hands" were so tainted with their blood, I could smell it as if it were my own scent.  
  
I reached out to the table in front of me and drew toward me the only two objects I craved in this world of peace.  
  
One was a picture of Heero and I. Me with one arm slung about his shoulders, and a big goofy grin on my face; he with a small smile on his.  
  
I tore my eyes away from the happy faces in the picture to the other object. I knew it so well by now, that I almost didn't have to look at it, even though I was usually looking down it's barrel. The metal chilled my fingers as I held it.  
  
I looked back down at the picture. A tear slid down my face and spattered onto the upturned faces in the picture.  
  
I lifted Heero's gun to my head, never taking my eyes off the picture.  
  
"Ai shiteru Heero, itsudemo".  
  
I fired. 


End file.
